Net neutrality advisory forum wants engineers to hash it out

Responsible cooperation or attempt to kneecap the FCC? ISPs like Comcast, AT&T …

The FCC has stirred up plenty of controversy with its own "third way" approach to regulating network neutrality, with ISPs routinely arguing that decisions about network management should be made by their experts and their engineers, not by a government agency. To that end, companies like Time Warner cable, Verizon, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Comcast, AT&T, and others today joined forces and announced the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group.

The inelegantly acronymed BITAG will serve as an industry-driven forum to “develop consensus on broadband network management practices or other related technical issues that can affect users' Internet experience, including the impact to and from applications, content and devices that utilize the Internet.”

That's a fancy way of saying that the forum allows engineers to seek consensus on proper network management practices in a less adversarial forum than an FCC rulemaking. The forum will be overseen by Dale Hatfield, a well-respected former FCC Chief Technologist and current director of the Silicon Flatirons Center at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Government staffers are welcome to observe the group's works.

Getting ISPs and Internet companies like Google together to hash out network management guidance is all well and good, but what about Internet users, who are not represented in the group? Google's top telecom lawyer Rick Whitt said that "we welcome the involvement of other interested entities, especially those representing the Internet user community."

He also stressed that, at least in Google's view, BITAG was not some attempt to privatize FCC oversight. "Rather, we hope the BITAG can bring together some of the smartest technical minds in this space to provide some useful guidance to policymakers and Internet stakeholders alike," he said.

The new group would, however, work to “inform federal agencies in their industry oversight functions." Free Press, one of the groups that complained the loudest about Comcast's P2P blocking, worries that BITAG is an attempt to undermine the FCC and replace "public interest" regulation with corporate-focused rules.

“Allowing industry to set its own rules is like allowing BP to regulate its drilling," said Free Press Policy Counsel Chris Riley. "The Comcast BitTorrent case shows that without government oversight, Internet Service Providers will engage in what are already deemed by engineers to be bad practices.

"There must be a separate FCC rulemaking process, which can take the recommendations of this or any other voluntary advisory group into account, but rubber-stamping those recommendations would ignore the agency's mandate to create public policy in the public interest. "

The Open Internet Coalition, made up of public interest groups and Internet companies like Google, Skype, and Amazon, doesn't want BITAG to sap energy from the FCC's current net neutrality plan.

"We strongly feel as with all self-regulatory regimes, this can only be effective with a legal backstop to enforce voluntary industry rules at the FCC," said the group in a statement. "Without such a backstop, this approach will be toothless and ultimately ineffective."